Human Rights Initiative of North Texas (HRI) promotes human rights and dignity by providing free legal and social services to immigrant survivors of human rights abuses. We envision a country and community that welcomes immigrants, recognizes their contributions, and supports them on their path to safety, freedom, and opportunity.

Over the last year, we have shifted to a more democratic decision- making model, centered in staff-led committee recommendations and full-staff consensus processes. We formulated committees as staff, designating them either standing or ad hoc (to solve a time-bound issue). Each individual staff member may chair no more than one committee at a time, and each committee must represent a range of internal departments and roles. Committees include Pay Equity Committee, Onboarding committee, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Team, and ad hoc Hiring committees. We also handle some decision-making as a full staff through consensus processes, which often include thinking periods, opportunity for written comment, anonymous polling, and facilitated discussion. We rotate facilitation of our weekly staff meetings (during which decision-making occurs), so that the power to set agendas and facilitate meetings is shared across the staff.